Friday, May 15, 2015

Cashless Societies, Welfare Costs and Public Pensions

The Telegraph - How to end boom and bust: make cash illegal . A proposed new law in Denmark would basically make it impossible to pay in cash and require you to go all electronic with the government being the bank. Now I could talk about how I am for or against this law; but, in the end it doesn't really matter. The world is going cashless. The question is who will keep the tally, who will keep count of how much money you have? Do you trust JP Morgan Chase, they have been caught manipulating markets and stealing your money and even after having paid over $29 Billion in fines are still not done paying fines. Do you trust the Federal Reserve or do you want it to be government?

Business Cheat Sheet - How Much Do Welfare Programs Cost the U.S.? More Than You Ever Thought. Just so you know the number is $158 Billion. Sounds like a lot until you consider that we have spent TRILLIONS fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. An aircraft carrier costs about $13 Billion to build, the planes it carries cost almost as much if not more, the personnel and expenses are also in the hundreds of millions a year. About 75% of the families on welfare have people working; but, the minimum wage is so low that they need government subsidies to survive. Maybe we should be concerned more about taking care of our own people and spend less time killing people in foreign countries, just a thought.

Yahoo - Reuters - San Bernardino bankruptcy plan: bondholders hammered while pensions kept whole. The City of San Bernardino filed for bankruptcy protection. The article claims that the city wants to pay it's pension debt more than it's bondholders. This is insincere. The City of San Bernardino attempted to avoid their pension obligations and Calpers investigated finding that the city was hiding the money that would have allowed them to make their mandatory contributions. Imagine a company telling the Federal Government that they are not going to pay the employees Social Security money that has already been removed from your paycheck in private industry. Same thing.